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Sonora Pass Hwy 108 Photo Set

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Tree growing from granite rock on Hwy 108 California On our recent trip to Yosemite, Bodie State Park and Mono Lake where also on our itinerary. They are both on the eastern side of the Sierra Nevada Range and easily accessible by crossing through Yosemite Valley and east over the Sierras via the Tioga Pass. However, since the Tioga Pass was still closed with snow from the past winter we had to skirt round Yosemite by going to the north of the park taking Highway 108 over the Sonora Pass. We were lucky here as the Sonora Pass had only just opened itself that weekend. Despite the extra time and miles added to our trip, we ended up not minding it at all as the scenery on the way was incredibly beautiful, starting with the Stanislaus National Forest and then the Sonora Pass itself. By time we got to the area of the pass it was late afternoon, the sun was getting low in the sky behind us, and the light was just perfect. We couldn't but make frequent stops to take photos.

I've posted a small set of them in the photo galleries.

Sonora Pass Hwy 108 Photo Slide Show Gallery

By the way, you might not have noticed that the url for my photo blog is now www.johncorney.com. Hopefully much easier for you to remember and type if you have to.
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Samoan Youth

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This young man was preparing with his friends for his moment of fame on the stage at the Samoan Village at the Polynesian dance festival called Pasifika in Auckland in March this year. Samoan Youth Canon EOS 20D 1/30sec at f/20 ISO 200 Canon 70-300mm lens at 300mm More photographs from the same Pasifika Festival day can be found in my new post, Faces of Pasifika 2007 — A Day at Auckland's Pacific Festival .
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A Grunge Botanical Collection — Five Painterly Garden Pieces

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Over the past few weeks I've been building out a small collection of botanical pieces using photos taken in my garden here in Irvine, California, (and in one case out on a hiking trail here in SoCal), and using AI assistance to give each one a grunge, painterly treatment — dark, richly textured backgrounds with warm gold light breaking through, turning garden snapshots and trailside finds into something closer to old varnished still-life paintings than straight photography. Here's the full set so far. Epiphyllum oxypetalum — Queen of the Night, Painterly Botanical Art A night-blooming cactus that flowers just once or twice a year, for a single night — three blooms at different stages caught in one frame from a night it happened in my garden. Kangaroo Paw — Painterly Grunge Botanical Art Australia's velvety-flowered native, grown in my own garden, its stems reaching in different directions the way it actually grows rather than posed into symmetry. ...
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A Steindachner's Ebony Tarantula at Crystal Cove

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I crossed paths with this fellow on a hike at Crystal Cove State Park this morning, along the Fenceline trail. I posted it to iNaturalist as soon as I got home, and within a few hours had it confirmed by several people: a male Steindachner's ebony tarantula ( Aphonopelma steindachneri ). Turns out the timing wasn't a fluke. Males of this species leave their burrows specifically to search for mates between July and October, so this was a textbook-timed encounter rather than an unusual one — good to actually check that before assuming, since my first instinct was that a July sighting seemed early. After his photo session, I gently nudged him with a stick and he scurried off the trail into the chaparral, safe from being run over by a mountain biker or stomped by an arachnophobic hiker.  Aphonopelma steindachneri is native to the coastal ranges of Southern California and northern Baja California, and it's one of the tarantulas you're genuinely most likely to run into ...
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